


Just Breathe

by ProblematicPines



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Childhood Friends, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Five Nights at Freddy's: The Silver Eyes, Gen, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sapphic Undertones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:21:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23316790
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProblematicPines/pseuds/ProblematicPines
Summary: The Utah desert was obscured in deep purple shadow, with the silhouettes of prickly cacti and craggy rocks standing out against the sky. In the far distance, the ghosts of lavender mountains reared up against the late evening sky. It was black, but the horizon was a deep, misty greyish-blue.It was a colour that Jessica would have proudly stated was “ashen periwinkle”, but Charlie only classified colours by their most simplistic terms.So it was blue.
Relationships: Charlotte "Charlie" Emily & John, Charlotte "Charlie" Emily/Jessica
Kudos: 11





	Just Breathe

“How long’s it been since you’ve slept?”

This small, whispered question happened in the back of Charlie’s car. Said car was driving quietly down the highway in the direction of Hurricane, Utah, submerged in the darkness of the encroaching night. The driver was John, who had his eyes fixed squarely on the road ahead, which was illuminated by the bright headlights of the car. The cracked, sandy tarmac rolled towards the headlights, just to be swallowed up underneath the bonnet in a hazy blur. John’s hands were white-knuckled on the steering wheel, his arms tense from where he was leaning back in his car seat. He brushed a stray lock of brown hair behind his ear, and glanced in the rear view mirror.

Sitting in the back of her own car was Charlie, seated alongside Jessica. All three of them were quiet. An unspoken decision shared between them stated that they just allow the car to take them back to Utah without any unnecessary conversation. Given Charlie’s current mood, any and all conversations were deemed unnecessary.

Jessica, whether it was due to naivety or just plain refusal to adhere to the rules, broke the silence with her well-intentioned question anyway.

“...Two days.”

Charlie’s response was dry and caught in her throat, which was parched. She licked her dry lips, but no use. There was a dull, throbbing pain behind her eyes, and all she wanted to do was sleep. But she couldn’t sleep.

It certainly wasn’t due to lack of trying, either.

She was exhausted. Not just in the sense that she hadn’t slept for days and had been on edge all the time she was painstakingly awake, but spiritually. Despite only being seventeen years old, she already felt like she had surpassed the grand old age of seventy in the time span of a couple days.

_“Being in Hurricane would do that to you,”_ she lamented.

Charlie had her sneakers pressed up against the car seat in front of her, with her arms folded across her stomach. Her cap was pulled low over her brown eyes, and her messy hair framed her ashen face. Her gaze was fixed squarely on the world outside the car window. Just a few centimetres of glass separated her from the cool evening wind, but Charlie was too bruised and beaten to even bother rolling down the glass.

The Utah desert was obscured in deep purple shadow, with the silhouettes of prickly cacti and craggy rocks standing out against the sky. In the far distance, the ghosts of lavender mountains reared up against the late evening sky. It was black, but the horizon was a deep, misty greyish-blue.

It was a colour that Jessica would have proudly stated was “ashen periwinkle”, but Charlie only classified colours by their most simplistic terms.

So it was blue.

Charlie exhaled through her nose, and it misted up the glass a little. Reaching out one bandaged finger, she traced a shape in the misty glass before it vanished.

_ Squeak. _

_ Squeak. _

_ Squeeeaaaaakkkk. _

She’d drawn a balloon, with a trailing string behind it. Charlie pictured herself like a balloon, drifting away without anybody to ground her down. She imagined floating higher and higher and higher, untethered and unbridled by the issues that plagued her racing mind, until she got too high and just-

_ Popped! _

“You should really try and get some rest, Charlie,” Jessica coaxed quietly. “You’ll make yourself ill.” She reached out a delicate, manicured hand and rested it comfortingly on her friend’s shoulder, giving Charlie a reassuring squeeze through her bomber jacket. Charlie instinctively wanted to shrug Jessica off, but was too tired to resist. She reluctantly eased into her friend’s touch. Charlie thanked her hair for being so long and messy; it obscured her freckled cheeks, which she could feel were burning a rosy pink.

“Maybe...Maybe I should rest,” Charlie agreed in a dry whisper. She knew that she should; Aunt Jen had drilled into her the importance of getting enough sleep, especially during times of stress. If she knew that her niece hadn’t had so much as a wink in days, she would drive all the way down to Hurricane herself to ensure Charlie got some sleep.

“Should I pull over?” John asked. It was the first time he’d spoken the entire drive.

Jessica looked over at Charlie for confirmation, but she shook her head. “Just...just keep driving, John,” she replied quietly. The sooner they got back to Hurricane the better. So John continued their monotonous drive through the Utah desert in the direction of the barely-visible lights in the distance that signified civilization.

Charlie eased her legs back down onto the floor of the car, and debated on how she should fall asleep. It wasn’t like she could stretch out, especially since Jessica was right there. Even though it was her car, she felt bad about asking Jessica to move into the passenger seat just so that she could get some restless sleep.

Somehow, Jessica understood her friend’s dilemma.

“You can rest against me if you’d like, Charlie,” Jessica invited. “I don’t mind.”

“You sure?”

Jessica nodded warmly. She shuffled over closer to Charlie, and patted her shoulder welcomingly. She was wearing a blouse, so her alabaster skin was showing. Charlie quietly thanked her friend and sidled up close. She tucked her legs up behind her on the seat, and zipped up her jacket to keep warm.

Tentatively, Charlie rested her head on Jessica’s shoulder. It was a little uncomfortable due to her wearing her cap, so she took it off and casually dropped it onto the bed of the car.

Jessica was warm. There was a mole on her shoulder that Charlie hadn’t noticed before. Her blouse had a small hole in it, right underneath the armpit.

She also smelled very nice. Coconut, maybe? Charlie wasn’t a very girly kind of girl, so she didn’t know all the perfumes and fragrances there were in the world. But what Charlie did know that it was such a unique kind of “Jessica” smell that it was absolutely euphoric to just sit there and deeply inhale it.

For a while, Charlie sat there, resting against Jessica and listening to the ambience of the night. The rumbling of the tires on the tarmac, the rhythmic tapping of John’s finger on the side of the steering wheel, the quiet thump-thump-thump of Jessica’s heart underneath her frilly white blouse.

It all culminated in a serene, almost dreamlike sensation that made the exhaustion in Charlie’s aching bones slowly wither away as sleep overcame her.

But Charlie knew what would happen when she would fall asleep.

She’d been experiencing nightmares for days since they’d traveled to Freddy’s, and it was the whole reason why Charlie had outright refused to sleep. If she didn’t sleep, then he couldn’t hurt her.

If she didn’t sleep, then she wouldn’t end up like Sammy.

But Charlie’s sleep in the back of the car turned from a dreamless void into a ghastly nightmare that was exactly the same as the ones she’d been having for days.

He’d sneak into her room while she was totally defenceless, drag her to that accursed restaurant with its filthy animatronics, with its blinding neon lights, and stuff her into one of those stinking, blood-stained costumes. Push her kicking and screaming into the nest of razor-wire and metal teeth, which would shred and tear at her exposed flesh until her blood was pooling in her lungs and leaking from her nose and ears and eyes and mouth and-

“Charlie! Charlie!”

Jessica’s voice cut through the terror, loud and full of concern. Charlie hadn’t realized it, but in her exhausted, frantic mindset, she’d started deliriously panting. Harsh, gasping breaths that had reduced Charlie into a quivering, wide-eyed mess on the backseat of the car. Her fingers dug into the worn leather of the seat, her nails digging deep enough to leave grooves. Her bandaged fingers had started bleeding from where she’d been cut by shards of glass in Freddy’s, and it was now running across her skin, bright red and glistening in the evening shadow.

“I’m-I’m-” Charlie gasped, unable to form a coherent sentence. She didn’t quite feel like she was in control of her own body, but she did feel Jessica’s hands on her shoulders, holding her still in the seat and directing her frantic gaze to her own face.

“Charlie, focus on me,” Jessica commanded. Charlie blubbered, tears starting to sting her eyes. Jessica’s angelic face started turning hazy in her vision as fat tears rolled down Charlie’s cheeks, dripping onto her lap and soaking through.

“He’s- He’s gonna get me, he’s gonna break- break in, and- and- and-”

Charlie wasn’t making sense. Her mind was rushing with countless thoughts that threatened to spill over the precipice and overwhelm her. She couldn’t let that happen. Not when her friends were in danger.

Not when he was standing right outside the car window, his bloody fingers tracing over the glass, his milky white eyes staring in at her while he brandished a knife with a crimson blade, the same one he used on Sammy-

“Charlie!”

Charlie didn’t know it at first, but after a while, she realized that she was being embraced by Jessica, whose arms were hugging Charlie so tight it was almost even harder to breathe. Jessica was saying something, something inaudible.

“...t’s okay, Charlie. Just breathe. You’re gonna be okay. Just focus on my voice, and do wh..t I te...ou t...do…”

Charlie forced herself to listen, and after a while, she’d managed to get her breathing under control. It was still a little shaky, but it was much better than it was before, which was a relief for everybody in the car.

Jessica was shaking like a leaf in the wind, but it was a shaking different to Charlie’s; it was a trembling that Charlie knew was due to her nerves, and her concern for her beloved childhood friend.

“Are you okay?” John asked timidly. 

Charlie realized that he’d pulled over on the side of the road, most likely to avoid any accidents due to her night terror. She slowly nodded, not really believing it herself.

Jessica let go of her friend, but still held both of Charlie’s quaking hands in her own. She rubbed comforting circles over the backs of her hands with her thumbs. Her nail varnish was flaking away. It was pink.

_“Amaranth,”_ Jessica would have said.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Jessica asked instead, staring deep into Charlie’s face, searching for any indication of what Charlie had been so afraid of. The smaller girl sniffled and wiped away her tears with the back of her hand, and shook her head again. She wanted to say something; she needed to say something, to reassure John and Jessica that she was okay.

“I...I’m okay. Honest,” she replied dishonestly. “I just...I just need to think on things for a while. Is that okay?”

Jessica nodded encouragingly. “Do whatever you think is best,” she responded. “But, Charlie…” She waited until Charlie’s reddened eyes met hers, which were shiny with unshed tears of her own. “Don’t block us out, especially if you need us. We’re here for you if you ever wanna talk. Isn’t that right, John?”

John nodded in agreement. A small smile came across his face. Charlie hadn’t noticed the dimples in John’s cheeks before, nor how square his jaw was when he smiled.

“Of course, Charlie,” he encouraged. He reached out a hand and gave Charlie’s knee a reassuring squeeze, just like when Jessica had tried comforting Charlie.

After a while, John started up the car engine and continued driving through the night into Hurricane, whose lights were much brighter and closer now.

In the back seat of Charlie’s car, the two girls rested against one another. Charlie still rested her head against Jessica’s warm, mole-patterned shoulder, smelling her friend’s coconut-scented perfume and allowing Jessica to continue rubbing her thumbs across her hands.

“Would you like to try sleeping again?” Jessica asked quietly.

Charlie shook her head slowly.

“I’m good. Thanks.”

**Author's Note:**

> It's been almost a whole year since I wrote my first FNAF FanFic, which was coincidentally a Charlie X Jessica FanFic to boot! This Ship is greatly overlooked in the fandom, yet I greatly prefer it to the canon Ship of Charlie X John. Nothing against Scott or Keira for including it, but it just feels very basic and unimportant in the grand scheme of things.
> 
> Charlie X Jessica is where the good shit is at though!
> 
> This Fic was originally one that involved Charlie getting hurt in Freddy's and Jessica tending to her injuries, but partway through writing it I saw an amazing Fic prompt and just had to write it. Said prompt included the opening line of this Fic.
> 
> Also, you cannot convince me otherwise that none of the kids from TSE/TTO/TFC don't suffer from PTSD after all the shit they went through in Freddy's. Charlie especially. It's not everyday you're the target of a crazed child killer that also happens to be be your uncle figure.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are greatly appreciated and give me inspiration to continue writing! Thank you so much for reading my FanFiction!


End file.
